Writing Westward Podcast

Writing Westward features conversations with writers of the North American West, sampling from a variety of disciplines and subfields.

The podcast is hosted and produced by the Redd Center associate director, Professor Brenden W. Rensink.

Episode List:

068 - Holly Miowak Guise
- Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II (Nov. 2024)
067 - Brent M. Rogers
- Buffalo Bill and the Mormons (Oct. 2024)
066 - Zak Podmore
- Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell's Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River (Sept. 2024)

---------- June - August 2024 - 3-Month Break for a technology overhaul ----------

065 - Julie Carr
- Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West (May 2024)
064 - Lyndsie Bourgon
- Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods (Apr. 2024)
063 - Andrew Curley
- Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation (Mar. 2024)
062 - Peter Boag
- Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon (Feb. 2024)
061 - Navied Mahdavian
- This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America (Jan. 2024)
060 - Natalia Molina
- A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (Dec. 2023)
059 - Sarah Keyes
- American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail (Nov. 2023)
058 - Heather Hansman
- Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow (Oct. 2023)
057 - Molly P. Rozum
- Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies (Sept. 2023)
056 - Michael K. Johnson
- Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and Genre (August 2023)
055 - Ellen Wohl
- The Secrets of Mountain Ecosystems and the Afterlife of Trees (July 2023)
054 - Andrea Geiger
- Converging Empires: Citizens and Subjects in the North Pacific Borderlands: 1867-1945 (June 2023)
053 - Melissa L. Sevigny
- Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon (May 2023)
052 - Bryce Andrews
- Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West (April 2023)
051 - Craig Childs
- Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau (March 2023)
050 - Anne F. Hyde
- Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West (Feb. 2023)
049 - Timothy Paul Bowman
- You Will Never Be One of Us: A Teacher, a Texas Town, and the Rural Roots of Radical Conservatism (Jan. 2023)
048 - Alaina E. Roberts
- I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (Dec. 2022)
047 - Cameron Blevins
- Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West (Nov. 2022)
046 - Kevin Waite
- West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (Oct. 2022)
045 - Josh Garret-Davis
- What is a Western? Region, Genre, Imagination (Sept. 2022)
044 - Robert Chaney
- The Grizzly in the Driveway: The Return of Bears to a Crowded American West (Aug. 2022)
043 - Christian S. Harrison
- All the Water the Law Allows: Las Vegas and Colorado River Politics (July 2022)
042 - Jon T. Coleman
- Nature Shock: Getting Lost in America (June 2022)
041 - Corinna Cook
- Leavetakings: Essays (May 2022)
040 - Sarah Deutsch
- Making a Modern U.S. West: The Contested Terrain of a Region and Its Borders, 1898-1940 (Apr. 2022)
039 - Sara Humphreys
- Manifest Destiny 2.0: Genre Trouble in Game Worlds (Mar. 2022)
038 - James McGrath Morris
- Tony Hillerman: A Life (Feb. 2022)
037 - Ryanne Pilgeram
- Pushed Out: Contested Development and Rural Gentrification in the US West (Jan. 2022)

---------- September - December 2021 - 4-Month Break while host, Brenden W. Rensink, was on sabbatical ----------

036 - Andrea Ross
- Unnatural Selection: A Memoir of Adoption and Wilderness (Aug. 2021)
035 - Erika Allen Wolters and Brent S. Steel
- The Environmental Politics & Policy of Western Public Lands (July 2021)
034 - Benjamin Hoy
- A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands (June 2021)
033 - Steven L. Peck
- The Tragedy of King Leere in a Post-Apocalyptic West (May 2021)
032 - Tiffany Midge
- Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's (Apr. 2021)
031 - Susan Lee Johnson
- Writing Kit Carson: Fallen Heroes in a Changing West (Mar. 2021)
030 - Janne Lahti
- The American West and the World: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives (Feb. 2021)
029 - James R. Skillen
- This Land is My Land: Rebellion in the West (Jan. 2021)
028 - Bathsheba Demuth
- Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (Dec. 2020)
027 - Barney Scout Mann
- Journeys North: The Pacific Crest Trail (Nov. 2020)
026 - Sherry L. Smith
- Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America (Oct. 2020)
025 - Kenneth F. Dewey, Dan O'Brien, & Larkin Powell
- Great Plains Weather, Bison, & Birds (Sept. 2020)
024 - Justin Farrell
- Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West (Aug. 2020)
023 - Jeff Metcalf
- Back Cast: Fly-Fishing and Other Such Matters (July 2020)
022 - Maurice Crandall
- These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598-1912 (June 2020)
021 - Robert Lee
- Land-grab Universities (May 2020)
020 - Miroslava Chávez-García
- Migrant Longing: Letter Writing Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Apr. 2020)
019 - Monica Muñoz Martinez
- The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Mar. 2020)
018 - Megan Kate Nelson
- The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (Feb. 2020)
017 - Jack Nisbet
- The Dreamer and the Doctor: A Forest Lover and a Physician on the Edge of the Frontier (Jan. 2020)
016 - Frank Bergon
- Two-Buck Chuck & The Marlboro Man: The New Old West (Dec. 2019)
015 - Manu Karuka
- Empire's Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad (Nov. 2019)
014 - Rebecca Robinson and Stephen Strom
- Voices and Views from Bears Ears (Oct. 2019)
013 - Leah Sottile
- The Bundyville Podcast and Longform Western Journalism (Sept. 2019)
012 - Debra Gwartney
- I Am a Stranger Here Myself (Aug. 2019)
011 - Eric P. Perramond
- Unsettled Waters: Rights, Law, and Identity in the American West (July 2019)
010 - John Branch
- The Last Cowboys: A Pioneer Family in the New West (June 2019)
009 - David A. Chang
- The World and All Things Upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration (May 2019)
008 - Beth Lew-Williams
- The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Apr. 2019)
007 - Terence Young
- Heading Out: A History of American Camping (Mar. 2019)
006 - Flannery Burke
- A Land Apart: The Southwest and the Nation in the Twentieth Century (Feb. 2019)
005 - Tacey M. Atsitty
- Rain Scald: Poems (Jan. 2019)
004 - Stephen Pyne
- Fire in the American West (Dec. 2018)
003 - Benjamin Johnson
- Escaping the Dark Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation (Nov. 2018)
002 - Victoria Lamont
- Westerns: A Women's History (Oct. 2018)
001 - L ouis S. War ren
- God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America (Sept. 2018)

Episode transcriptions are not currently available but each episode is available with closed captioning on the Redd Center YouTube Channel.

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Podcast Notes:

Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands.
Podcast Music was written and recorded by local Provo composer by Micah Dahl Anderson.
Episodes are recorded via Skype or in person and amateurishly engineered by Rensink.
To submit a book to be considered for a podcast episode, email writingwestwardpodcast@byu.edu.